The Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) has pushed Ghana’s Asset Recovery Regime a notch higher, training journalists and civil society organizations to lead the charge for the strengthening of Ghana’s institutional and legal frameworks for identifying, tracing, seizure, forfeiture, confiscation and management of proceeds of crime.
One of such strategic trainings which came off in the Ashanti Regional Capital Kumasi assembled Civil Society and Community Based Organizations to reconsider the operations of the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) and the Financial Intelligence Center (FIC).
The work of these two state institutions are pivotal to Ghana’s ability to meet local aspirations and international standards of investigating corruption and its related financial crimes, and ensuring that illicit gains are recovered from perpetrators.
Role of OSP
Mr. Seth Mana Amoako, an Officer of the Financial Intelligence Centre walked participants through the Anti Money Laundering Act that set up the Financial Intelligence Center and the role of the FIC as an administrative body that investigates and provides intelligence to relevant state investigative and prosecutorial agencies.
He pointed out that asset recovery had become essential at a time criminal cells and complex syndicates continue to plunder nations through embezzlement, tax evasion, Cybercrime, environmental crimes, kidnapping and forgery.
The intelligence officer stated that some seemingly innocent arrangements of designated nonfinancial businesses and professions like real estate dealers and brokers, law and accounting firms, virtual asset transactions and dealers in precious metals and stones had also come under the radar as fertile routes for laundering and transferring tainted cash.
He warned that allowing the criminal cells to make away with the proceeds of crime posed an existential threat as such ill-gotten returns, find their way into funds used to support terrorism and proliferation financing which involves the building of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons capable of causing mass destruction.
Mr. Amoako indicated that Ghana’s ratification of international treaties and membership of global watch dog organizations holds the country responsible to International standards for assessing countries through a mutual evaluation scheme guided by the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Asset Recovery Interagency Network in West Africa (ARINWA) and the ECOWAS Protocol on Anti-Corruption.
Disclosing an ongoing risk assessment of Ghana; he was confident the country’s local laws including the Anti-Money Laundering Act, the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) Act, and the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act bolsters Ghana’s chances at escaping a blacklisting on the count of immediate outcome 8 which centers on Asset Recovery.
He encouraged the Media and CSOs to widen their scope in dealing with corruption in both the private and public sector reiterating the difficulty in getting private sector players to develop and comply with actionable anti-corruption and money laundering policies.
EOCO’s contribution to Asset Recovery
In the year 2023 and 2024 alone, the Economic and Organized Crimes Office realized GH¢279 million in asset recovery efforts, with the value of recovered assets rising from GH¢79 million in 2023 to GH¢200 million recovered in 2024.
The agency further impounded or restrained more than 60 stolen vehicles from the year 2022 to 2024 with nine court orders.
Addressing the workshop, Mr. Emmanuel Kwaku Dzakpata, an official of the Legal and Prosecutions Department of the Economic and Organized Crime Office contended that asset recovery remains crucial to combating financial crimes, depriving criminals of their ill-gotten gains, preventing future criminal activity, providing resources for development for public benefit and allowing stolen assets to be returned to victims.
He however emphasized the need for the media and CSOs to advocate for the state to grant specialized institutions like EOCO and IFS the required institutional liberties and funding to conduct the very expensive operation of tracing, seizure, confiscation, freezing, preserving, recovery and return of proceeds of corruption.
CSO and Media Responses
Civil Society and Community Based Organizations at the workshop took advantage of the opportunity to deliberate on the legal framework, the autonomy and resources accorded EOCO, IFC and the Narcotic Control Authority in the performance of their asset recovery functions.
Director of NGO, ABAK Foundation and GACC focal Person Philip Duah raised concerns about the separation of the functions of EOCO and the OFFICE of the Special Prosecutor and advocated for the two bodies to be rather merged and strengthened to work.
Christiana osei, director of light for children Ghana called for EOCO to be granted its autonomy to prosecute, instead of the current arrangement where Attorneys General reserve the right to prosecute cases after EOCO’s painstaking investigations. She warned that the status-quo allows room for governments to influence how far cases could travel.
Madam Aba Oppong, Executive Director of Rights and Responsibilities Initiatives Ghana (RRIG), challenged the media and CSOs to be vocal about the work of the key institutions mandated to recover stolen assets including the push for the head of EOCO to be given the same security of tenure as the OSP.
“The roles of both the OSP and EOCO are very important in retrieving assets for the larger economic security for the country. The understanding is that we as CSOs and Media personnel shall be advocates of the work they do and caution people about ways through which they may fall victim to such acts of crime,” she pointed out.
Another concern that run through the demands of the participants on government was for better funding and equipping of the various investigative and security agencies, to motivate officers to operate effectively and minimize the temptation to be compromised in the line of duty.
The engagement which formed part of the GACC project, ‘Building Political Will and Public Support for Asset Recovery in Ghana,” was organized under the theme, “Ghana’s legal and institutional frameworks for recovery of proceeds of crime; the role of citizens and the media in asset recovery’, with funding support from the Inter-Governmental Action Group Against Money Laundering in West Africa.
By: Ivan Heathcote – Fumador.
